GM-backed electric truck startup Lordstown Motors is going public

Good News Notes:

One-year-old Lordstown Motors will become a publicly traded company in an effort to bring its commercial electric pickup truck, the Endurance, to market. And it will do this with more support from General Motors than was previously known, according to financial filings.

The startup plans to list on the Nasdaq stock exchange under the ticker “RIDE” by combining with a special purpose acquisition company called DiamondPeak, shares of which already trade on the exchange. It’s the same type of “reverse merger” move that hydrogen trucking company Nikola pulled off earlier this year to go public and that EV startup Fisker is currently trying to execute. It’s also the latest to cash in on a sudden funding frenzy in the electric vehicle startup space, which has seen fresh money go to Karma AutomotiveChina’s Li Auto and XPeng, and others.

The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2020 and would provide Lordstown Motors with around $675 million in funding — more than the $450 million that CEO Steve Burns told The Verge he felt was needed to get the Endurance into production by the middle of 2021.

Revealed in June, the Endurance is a full-size electric pickup truck with about 250 miles of range. One of the truck’s standout features is that it is powered by four electric hub motors, with one in each wheel (as opposed to placing them on the axle). This makes it possible to precisely deliver differing amounts of torque to each wheel, which helps in tough driving conditions. The truck will start at $52,500.”

View the whole story here: https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/3/21352433/gm-lordstown-motors-electric-truck-startup-public-merger-spac

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